Three drugs, three countries: personal stories of COVID-19 vaccination

The mass vaccination against coronavirus is going on all over the world, and, most likely, it will inevitably reach you. Three journalists Bi-bi-si in three countries of the world they talk about how they were vaccinated: Yana Litvinova in the UK, Oleg Boldyrev in Russia and Anastasia Zlatopolskaya in Israel.

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London. Yana Litvinova

For me, it all started with a call from the hospital, where I had to go for another procedure that was absolutely necessary for a relatively normal life.

“Mrs. Litvinova? - said a pleasant female voice. — You should have come to us on February 19. So, don't come. Let you get vaccinated against coronavirus first, and after four weeks - you’re welcome, just don’t forget to tell us when this happened.”

A little taken aback, I nevertheless figured out to ask if this means that I am on some priority lists, because if the coronavirus in the air is incompatible with my treatment, then I probably should have been vaccinated as soon as possible.

“This is not for us,” the voice has not lost any pleasantness or cheerfulness, “another department is involved in vaccinations, and not even a department, but your local clinic, contact them.”

Considering that this very clinic tirelessly bombarded me with text messages that I did not need to call them and ask questions about vaccinations, and they themselves would inform when my turn came, the advice of a pleasant voice was completely useless.

But then I was very lucky, because our doctor called me, the English analogue of a district therapist, who knows the whole family as flaky, to clarify when a nurse can come to us to vaccinate my mother.

Mom, due to her age, was one hundred percent in the priority group. Taking advantage of the opportunity, I asked the dearest Dr. Caroline, what should I do?

Caroline thought about it: “It’s still unclear about the medical indicators; we ourselves don’t really know who should be allowed ahead and who shouldn’t. There seem to be no issues with you, but the process may take a while. But I will put you on the list as the main person caring for your mother. You’re the main person, aren’t you?” I hastened to answer in the affirmative.

About a week later, my phone blinked: I was invited to receive the coveted injection. Caroline's tactic had clearly worked.

At the appointed time, I arrived at the indicated address. It was another small local clinic, though not the one to which we are all assigned. A queue snaked around the clinic in exemplary order.

The people obediently kept a two-meter distance and were gloomily freezing. In London, minus one is almost a disaster, but they decided not to let us inside in order to minimize the chances of accidental infection.

Between us, trying not to get too close, a young man in a bright yellow waistcoat, usually worn by road workers breaking the asphalt in the middle of the expressway, scurried about.

His task was to correlate the names with the available lists and provide us with two sheets of paper with questions that we will be asked just before the injection.

The line dutifully called names and dates of birth and asked one single question: what kind of vaccine will we receive today? Hearing that in the near future we have AstraZeneca, everyone expressed deep satisfaction.

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The line moved on pretty quickly. Once inside, I discovered why: a small lobby was partitioned off into eight booths.

There were paramedics in the booths, next to them lay a pile of syringes ready to inject.

This was the last checkpoint before the finish. They took my temperature, asked if I had been vaccinated against coronavirus or anything else in the past week, if I had any unexplained coughing fits, and if I gave my consent to the upcoming procedure.

Unable to bear it, I asked a nurse named Mohammed: “Are there people who, after all this, get up and proudly walk away without having been vaccinated?”

Muhammad rolled his blackened eyes over his mask and said that the computer program would not give him the opportunity to record my vaccination if at least one of the questions remained unanswered.

Pulling the needle out of me, Muhammad asked the last, not so idiotic question: did I come here by car? Because if so, you have to wait 15 minutes to make sure I don't collapse in terrible convulsions and crush innocent citizens.

There were no convulsions. No side effects - so far either. I sit and patiently wait for the second vaccination. Because my body's normal healing process can only resume four weeks after the second dose. Which they forgot to tell me at first. Okay, not so scary: at least half the distance is already behind us.

Moscow. Oleg Boldyrev

“Shcheglov - to 321st! Is there Shcheglov? - the nurse shouted into the corridor, where about 20 people were sitting next to me. An elderly man in a black sweater stood up. Mr. Shcheglov, I and everyone else came to the Moscow clinic for the first Sputnik vaccination.

After almost a year of speculation and speculation about the coronavirus, after restrictions, quarantine measures, masks almost ingrown into the face and liters of antiseptic spent, after alarm calls from infected relatives and friends, after conversations with experts and scientists about how to look for a way out, the first step towards the possible escape from danger was discouragingly prosaic.

Why did I decide to get vaccinated? For personal reasons. Circumstances have changed; I need to spend a lot of time with a chronically ill disabled person.

In mid-December, it seemed that no one in Moscow wanted to shoot up. I checked - and the next window for recording, according to the State Services website, was already in 15 minutes. I did what everyone else did - decided to wait.

My calculation was not very scientific, but empirically understandable: with thousands of people “injected” outside of clinical trials, it will be difficult to hide significant and severe side effects.

The same thing would happen with a wave of diseases if, God forbid, Sputnik turned out to be completely useless. But the long-term effectiveness of the Russian, and all other vaccines, is so far a matter of faith, not fact. Three weeks passed, I didn’t see any mass reports about any extraordinary consequences of the injection for the body, and I made up my mind.

While I was waiting, there were clearly more people wanting to get vaccinated - the next opportunity opened only in two weeks. And so, after waiting for the required time, showing up at the clinic, filling out a questionnaire about the presence of colds, allergies and everything else that would be an obstacle to the injection, I sat down in a short line.

The way out of it led to a therapist, who measured my blood pressure and made sure once again that I was not sick with anything. The doctor said that the number of people in the queue for the injection became noticeably more after the authorities allowed people over 65 to be vaccinated.

Until this age, I still live a long time, but the fact that almost anyone can get an injection in Moscow was a fact long before vaccination points began to open even in shopping centers.

“Who do you work for?” - the nurse at the computer shouted over the noise of the treatment room. “In the media,” I responded while her colleague rubbed alcohol on my left shoulder.

"How is that?" - asked the nurse. After thinking about it, I gave the real reason: “I take care of the elderly.” “In a nursing home, or what?” - she responded. I looked back over my current caring responsibilities and answered yes. A rather painful injection followed.

Controlling whether any extraordinary consequences of the vaccination would appear, I sat in the corridor for another 20 minutes. Opposite me, after the injection, 40-year-old Ekaterina, a general practitioner, was resting. Her decision, like mine, was also not the product of unbridled enthusiasm.

After the race with the creation of this drug, the scandal with trials on the scientists themselves, the involvement of soldiers in research, after the victorious announcements of the start of mass vaccination almost in September, the publication of interim results of clinical trials that raised questions among Western scientists, Catherine was certainly not sure of that the Russian vaccine will defeat covid.

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It should be noted that the conversation took place before the creators of Sputnik published new research results in the Lancet journal, which were accepted by the scientific community much more favorably than the previous ones.

And on the other side of the scale she has an acquaintance who spent a whole month in the hospital with Covid complications. She didn't want such problems for herself. “The possible harm is less than the possible benefit,” is how Catherine formulated it.

Like many who described their feelings from the vaccine, the night after the injection I had aches all over my body. Paracetamol calmed her down without difficulty. The next three weeks flew by without any consequences - and then, again on Sunday evening, I came for the second injection.

The queue moved from the fifth to the first floor of the clinic, the security guard in the lobby said that the elevators could no longer cope with the flow of sign-ups. I took a place in line for three young natives of Central Asia. They did not understand Russian well, so there was a slight confusion with the line.

Then the process was similar - again questions in the form, again a non-binding conversation with a therapist, this time accompanied by measuring the level of oxygen in the blood. With my papers, the doctor walked down the corridor to the treatment room - not a very efficient use of her time.

This time the injection in the right shoulder was completely unnoticeable, but the consequences a few hours later were much more painful. The pain without fever lasted for almost a day and a half, and painkillers could only partially cope with it.

Now, according to the creators of Sputnik, I am a couple of weeks away from maximum protection against coronavirus. But - with or without a vaccine - I will continue to ride the subway wearing a mask and will try, as much as possible, to avoid spending long periods of time in crowds of people.

In addition to Covid antibodies, the vaccine gives hope. But, alas, it does not provide unlimited confidence that I will be able to live according to the “pre-Covid” rules.

Jerusalem. Anastasia Zlatopolskaya

In Israel, anyone over 16 years old who has not yet had a covid infection can get vaccinated.

To sign up for a vaccination, you either need to call your health insurance company or schedule a queue via the mobile app. Vaccination points are open throughout the country, and literally within a radius of a couple of kilometers, most likely, you can find such a point.

They are located not only in hospitals and clinics, but also in specially converted office buildings, stadiums, drive-through centers (where you can get vaccinated without leaving your car) and other points.

Some time ago, a tent vaccination center was opened even on the main square in Tel Aviv, where all protests usually take place. Mobile centers are emerging in markets, parks and parking lots.

I signed up through the application. I chose a convenient time and found a vaccination point literally a few hundred meters from my home. A couple of days later I went for the first dose.

Even before entering the clinic, I saw signs for “lechisunim” (for vaccinations). After walking through several corridors, I ended up at the office where vaccinations are done. There was only one person standing in front of me, and after a few minutes I was called to go inside.

In Israel, until recently, 150-200 thousand people were vaccinated daily. But then the pace dropped, as more than 50% of the population had already received the first vaccine, and more than 30% the second. And the health ministry faced vaccine distrust among some communities.

Most of the anti-inoculants were among Orthodox Jews and Arabs, as well as among immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The office is divided into several parts, and 3-4 health workers work in parallel. The whole procedure took about five minutes: several questions from the questionnaire - whether she was pregnant and whether she had any allergies. And then they clarified whether he was left-handed or right-handed, and instantly gave an injection.

They are vaccinated with Pfizer vaccines, vaccination takes place in two stages. The second vaccination is after 21 days.

After the injection, they asked me to wait for about 15 minutes in the fresh air and handed me a booklet with the date of the second vaccination and information about vaccination in three languages ​​- Hebrew, Arabic and Russian.

After a couple of hours, I was already on the set and almost did not feel any side effect of the vaccination. Only a slight feeling of fatigue and at some point a slight chill. By nightfall, however, the hand at the injection site was very sore, but by morning the pain was gone.

I naively believed that after the second vaccination I could calmly return to work. In the same office, they also promptly injected me with a second dose and asked if everything was all right after the first one.

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This time, the hand ached almost immediately, and it was difficult to overcome fatigue with one cup of coffee. By the evening, new effects of the injection began to appear: pain in muscles and joints, headache, nausea, heartburn, fever.

And by the middle of the night it was already completely lousy: it was shaking with chills, then it was thrown into a fever. At the same time, he terribly broke his back and twisted from stomach pains. At some point, I tried to get up and walk to the bathroom, but it was almost impossible to move.

I remember my very pale reflection in the mirror, I think I almost fainted then.

The condition worsened so much that I began to scroll through the options in my head what to do if it got worse: wake up the neighbors (owners of the house), call a friend, or try to call an ambulance myself.

It was so bad that I didn't really know where to call. Looking for a piece of paper, which the nurse asked to take from the printer before leaving the office. The last hope for her, for sure there is an emergency number, but it turned out to be a certificate of vaccination.

I managed to fall asleep only in the morning and then for a short while. A few hours later I woke up with the feeling as if I had been spun in a centrifuge all night. The whole body was breaking and numb in places. By evening it became easier, and on the third day I more or less felt normal.

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